Generally, business entities and merchants are entitled to recover indirect taxes paid, to include, but not limited to, sales tax paid on purchased goods and services. Moreover, sales taxes or commodity taxes need to be defined and paid by business enterprises and merchants in the course of their commercial operations. Business entities and merchants therefore understand the burden in calculating and paying the requisite state and federal taxes every year. For example, proper and efficient fulfillment of these requirements can be subject to different effective tax rates by different levels of governmental jurisdictions. These varying tax rates applicable to goods and services are governed by the nature and purpose of the purchased, leased or other such nature of the goods and services. At the same time, federal and state government entities also appreciate the undue burden associated with ensuring that all business entities and merchants are in compliance with their tax requirements and have made all requisite payments in a timely manner.
While many systems exists that generally automate the process of calculating the required payment and recovery of taxes, business entities, merchants as well as government entities would value a system that automates the timing in a manner in which taxes are paid, but at the same time, maintaining some personalized control over how such taxes are paid.
Furthermore, in today's ever-growing e-commerce community, there are many circumstances where a merchant or business will contract with a third party entity such as Google®. For example, internet search engines currently derive the vast majority of their revenues from an advertising based business model. However, given the recent downturn in economic conditions, such business models may be at risk since businesses and/or merchants continue to reduce their advertising expenditures. Accordingly, an alternative business model is needed whereby search engines can derive a commission which may be based upon an actual financial transaction between a merchant/business and its customer(s). Merchants and businesses would therefore further value a system that enables them to automatically schedule payments to a third party entity such as Google®.